FRANCE The

Italy
1. Introduction
The EU officially started to focus its interest on employment
opportunities for older workers and on active ageing in 1999, when
reference to older workers was explicitly introduced in the
employment guidelines. This interest is motivated by the
observation that the increasing life expectancy in all industrialised
countries leads to an increase in the average age of the population.
This process has implications for the composition of the labour
force, as the younger cohorts are shrinking and the number of older
workers is progressively increasing, and on the sustainability of
existing welfare systems.
The above demographic changes have now generated a significant
policy debate in Italy. In this country, the policies undertaken in the
previous decades – with the aim of encouraging early retirement, to
support companies in crisis and to favour the employment of
younger workers – have coupled with the demographic tendencies at
work to worsen the problem of the dependency of the population on
an increasingly lower number of active workers.
The problem is also key in the ongoing discussion on the reform of
the pension system and on the re-shaping of the welfare state. There
is increasing agreement that such a system is unbalanced and that it
encourages workers to retire too early. The reforms of the pension
system of the 1990s were based on the forecast that, without
interventions, pension expenditure would have reached 23.27% of
GDP in 2040, while it is now expected to reach 16% in 2033 and to
decrease subsequently below 14% of GDP. The cumulated value of
savings in the period 1996-2000 is estimated at 30.3 billion euro
(INPDAP1 Yearly Report on the Welfare State 2002).
Table 1: Demographic projections
2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050
Fertility rate* 1.26 1.4 1.4 1.41 1.42 1.42
Life expectancy*
Males 76.2 79.6 81.4
Females
Net inflow of
82.6 86.2 88.1
immigrants (x 1000)*
Old age dependency
rate (65+/15-64):
111 113 117 119 121 124
- ISTAT central
scenario
26.6 31.5 37.2 46.4 60.1 63.5
- Eurostat central
scenario
26.6 31.3 36.7 45.6 59.0 61.3
Source: ISTAT, Eurostat, Department for General Accounts
Note: * ISTAT central hypothesis – base 2000
Spring 2003 | European Employment Observatory Review 115
Trends
According to official forecasts (ISTAT, Eurostat), the Italian
population will increase in the first ten years of the century but,
starting from 2012, population ageing and low fertility rates (Table
1) 2 will start to produce a long-term reduction, which should lead to
a reduction in the population by 5.5 million individuals in 2050
(Table 2). Between 2000 and 2050, the active population is forecast
to fall by 10.7 million (4.5 million by 2030).
Whereas in Europe the population aged 55-64 should grow
considerably (around 20%) over the first fifteen years of the century,
in Italy the expected increase is less than 10%, although the number
of people in this age group should rise sharply in subsequent years.
The official forecasts of the population over 55, broken down by
selected years of age and gender, are summarised in Table 3.
The overall dependency rate is today not far from the EU average; in
particular, the old age dependency rate (the ratio between people
over 65 and the working-age population, i.e. the individuals between
15 and 64) is 2.3 percentage points above the EU average3 .
According to forecasts, in 2020 Italy will lose 1.8 million young
people and 2.8 million people in the working-age population, and
will have 3.8 million old people more than today. As shown in Table
4, the increase in Italy’s old age dependency rate will continue along
the pattern of growth faster than that of the EU average which
started in 1995. This will lead to a sharp increase in the old age
dependency rate which, in 2010, will be 4 percentage points above
the EU average. An even sharper increase is expected for subsequent
years (Table 1). Thus, both in the medium and in the long term the
ageing of the population and the increase in old dependency among
older people will represent an important problem.
Table 2: Italian population
Year Females Males Total
2000 29.676.583 28.003.312 57.679.895
2001 29.718.466 28.058.149 57.776.615
2010 30.030.374 28.458.124 58.488.498
2020 29.764.762 28.276.764 58.041.526
2030 29.207.037 27.768.963 56.976.000
2040 28.327.920 26.877.135 55.205.055
2050 26.823.717 25.343.853 52.167.570
1 National Institute for the Social Security of Public Employees.
2 The Italian fertility rate is today the lowest in the EU.
3 It should, however, be noticed that the ratio between the under 20s and the individuals of age 20-54 and the ratio between the over 60 and those of age 20-54 are
respectively higher and lower than the EU average.
Source: Istat.